


A Grave Situation

by PondAmyPond



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3107696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PondAmyPond/pseuds/PondAmyPond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah Graves has lost her job. When Iris West discovers her having a panic attack in the coffee shop, she suggests that she meet with Barry Allen. After all, Hannah and Barry are both forensic scientists, they must have lots in common, and maybe he'll even set her up with a job. But can Hannah let go of her painful past, and overcome the considerable obstacles thrown at the two of them, to be with Barry?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jitters

**Author's Note:**

> Hi :) I really hope you enjoy this. Funnily enough this story stemmed from a dream I had after binge watching the Flash, and it begged to be written down so here you go. I'll try to update it as regularly as possible, but I have many things to study for this year so be patient with me. It isn't beta-ed or anything, so if you spot a mistake, sorry! Let me know and I'll do my best to fix it.

Hannah Naomi Elizabeth Graves was bored. She sat staring out of the window of the coffee shop, her forgotten cup of English breakfast tea left to steam by itself on the table as she watched the passersby on the street. The tea was, in actual fact, less forgotten and more abandoned, on the excuse that “Americans truly didn’t understand how tea should taste.” Hannah was incredibly particular about her tea, and usually wouldn’t order one in a coffee shop, preferring to stick to the safety of her own kettle at home. However, today’s tea was an exception to her rule, as Hannah felt herself suddenly needing something comforting and homely. But it was soon discarded, making the gesture feel empty and hollow, and she could not entirely convince herself that the unpleasant taste left in her mouth was _only_ from the tea. So there she sat, her crimson curls standing bright against the black leather of the chair she occupied, and her heart-shaped, freckled, face cupped in one hand as she looked absent-mindedly out of the window onto the busy streets of Central City.

            Hannah did not often dwell on the events that had lead up to her moving to Central City. In fact, she took every opportunity to _not_ think about that particular section of her past, and if ever asked directly would reply with a vague statement along the lines of “I felt like a change,” or “I needed somewhere new,” and left it at that. Any further questions were immediately shut down by a death stare Satan himself would have been jealous of. Her mother had often joked that Hannah had been perfecting that stare since birth, when she scowled so hard at the midwife that the doctors thought she had a permanent disfiguration on her face. Hannah smiled a little to herself at this thought, but the smile didn’t last long and her overall mood of despair descended again. How was she to manage now that the lab had closed down? There were very few opportunities for forensic scientists in this city, and although she had considered applying for the police force, it could take her years to work her way up the chain to a position that would pay enough for her rent. Panic began to set in again, the familiar black claws squeezing her throat shut and cutting off the air. Gasping for breath, Hannah jolted out of her thoughts and concentrated on her breathing like the therapist had taught her. In, one, two, three, four, out, one, two, three, four. It wasn’t working. The claws tightened, talons scraping across her neck so sharp she swore they would draw blood. She brought her own hands up to her throat, whether to assist the claws in finishing their job or to pry them off no one would ever know.

            “Are you okay?”

            Hannah looked up at the concerned, but still beautiful face that was hovering over her own. The large chocolate brown eyes were set into an equally creamy chocolate face, and the long black hair fell over a set of smooth shoulders in a way that any man would think to be effortless, and every woman knew had taken at least an hour that morning to achieve. She moved her hands back into her lap, and took a deep breath before replying.

            “Yes, I’m fine thank you.” Hannah winced slightly at the harshness of her tone. She hadn’t meant to sound unfriendly, but the lingering effects of the panic attack made her tongue sharper than it usually was. The waitress, thankfully, did not seem to notice.

            “Oh! You’re English!” The girl laughed a melodious noise that would make all the angels in heaven smile if they could hear it. “Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting it! I’m Iris,” said the waitress, setting her tray down onto the table in front of Hannah, and sinking into the chair opposite. Hannah introduced herself too, and the girls shook hands. Then Iris continued, “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you are _not_ fine. Do you want to talk about it?”

            Hannah felt herself smile back at Iris without even thinking. There was a calming influence around her that Hannah simply couldn’t fight, even if she wanted to. And now that she came to think about it, why _shouldn’t_ she talk to Iris about her problem? It couldn’t do any more harm, and as they say, a problem shared….

            “I lost my job,” Hannah confessed, her eyes pointed at the floor and her voice no more than a whisper, the words leaving her mouth before she had a chance to consider if they were a good idea or not. There was a silence from the other side of the table that Hannah was about to break by apologising, when all of a sudden she felt two thin but strong arms circle around her shoulders.

            “You poor thing,” said Iris when she finally broke the hug. Hannah felt her eyes well up a little, and had to blink furiously for a second to stop herself crying at the kindness the other girl was showing to her. “What did you do?” asked Iris.

            “I was a forensic scientist, with a lab out at the edge of town. They were doing a series of experiments with the local government to train cadets in the police academy for crime scene analysis. My job is… was to make the scenes as realistic as possible. The training officer would give me the crime, and I would have to put in all the forensic clues that the cadets would need to solve the crime.” Hannah felt herself getting excited to tell Iris about her job. She had loved coming into work every day with a new puzzle to solve, a different challenge to figure out each time. And watching the cadets find her clues, or sometimes not find them, was very entertaining indeed. But the smile faded from her face as she finished talking, remembering that the lab was gone and her reality was far bleaker than before.

            “Wow that sounds really cool. Almost like what Barry does actually, except he does it for real,” Iris said. Hannah frowned slightly at this comment. Had she missed something?

            “Who’s Barry?” Hannah asked, the question coming naturally. It struck her how easily she was having this conversation. Iris was _easy_ to talk to, which frankly was a strange sensation. Her mother had often worried about how small the number of people Hannah counted among her friends was. But Hannah had never considered herself lonely until… well, until she moved continents to Central City, America.

            “Oh, right! I forgot we only just met for a second there,” Iris grinned, “Barry’s my… um… well he’s basically my brother,” she concluded. “His mom was murdered when he was young, and his dad was convicted of the crime, although he didn’t do it, so my dad took in Barry. We grew up together.” Her smile became nostalgic and her eyes glazed over a little, filled with happy memories.

            “Oh,” said Hannah.

            “I hope you don’t freak out about his past though,” said Iris, placing her hand gently on Hannah’s knee. “Barry’s so wonderful. He’s sweet, and caring, and kind, and so clever. He even succeeds in being funny most of the time, although don’t tell him I said that,” she added with a conspiratorial wink. Hannah giggled, in spite of herself. “That’s better!” Iris smiled, “I much prefer to see you smile like that. Your whole face lights up you know.” This comment added a bright red blush under the freckles, causing more giggles from both parties. When the laughter had subsided, Iris stood up, gathering the tea cup (and the now stone-cold tea) onto her tray.

            “You should come with me after work and meet Barry,” she suggested. “I’m sure you’d have loads in common, and you never know he might even be able to get you a job.”

            Hannah hesitated, but only for a moment. Nodding she stood up too. “I’d really like that, thank you,” she replied. “I’m going to go for a walk, but I’ll meet you back her in about an hour or so?” Iris nodded yes, and the two girls hugged before they parted; Iris back to work and Hannah out of the door to the park.

 


	2. Struck By Lightning

Hannah had spent a happy hour in the park with her camera. She wondered sometimes if it was a scientist thing to want to capture everything around her to be looked at in more detail later, or if it was the artist in her that wanted to preserve the beauty she saw before it faded. Either way, photography had always been one of her biggest passions outside of her work, and the park had been especially lovely in the fading sunshine of the evening. She wandered back to Jitters coffee shop slowly, flicking through the many pictures of flowers and trees that she had shot that day. Hannah never took pictures of people. Ever. It was a rule that she had only broken once, and didn’t intend to break again.

            When she arrived at the door, she looked up at the sign with a wry smile. It seemed oddly fitting that she had met Iris West by having a panic attack in a coffee shop called Jitters. Shaking her head a little, she pushed through the swinging glass door, and waved at Iris, who was behind the bar wiping up some glasses. Iris waved back and indicated that Hannah should sit down; she would be there in a few minutes. Hannah took a seat by the window again, losing herself quickly in watching the people on the street and wondering what they were thinking. She had learnt a long time ago that imagining other people’s thoughts was a reliable way to distract her from her own. About ten minutes later, Iris had finished cleaning behind the bar, and came over to Hannah.

            “Ready to go?” she asked.

            “Yes, I think so,” Hannah replied, with a cautious smile. The closer this meeting with Barry Allen got, the more nervous she became. This was ridiculous really, because she was only going to ask him if he could find her a job where he worked. It wasn’t as if it was a date or anything. She probably wasn’t even his type. He wouldn’t want to date a female version of himself. Not that she knew if she _was_ a female version of Barry Allen, because she’d not even met him yet. Which she would be doing in… Here her thoughts paused momentarily to allow her to check her watch as she walked in silence next to Iris down the street. At least, Hannah was silent. Iris on the other hand was chattering away about Barry, how excited she was for Hannah to meet him, and about how much she loved Central City at night. She also kept mentioning something called “Flash” but Hannah was too busy panicking to properly pay attention to that. She was going to meet Barry Allen in less than ten minutes now. Why was her stomach doing flips like that? It was making her queasy, and if it didn’t stop soon she might just tell Iris to forget the whole thing and go home to a proper cup of tea instead. At this thought, Hannah shook her head viciously as if she could shake it out of her ear. She didn’t understand _why_ exactly, but she felt very deeply that she _needed_ to meet Barry Allen. So she kept walking, and tried to answer Iris’s questions where appropriate (although she probably needn’t have bothered – Iris was quite happy to talk to herself it seemed). In no time at all, the two girls found themselves outside the Central City police HQ. A tall man with blond hair and a square jaw was leaning against a pillar outside the door, and he looked up when the girls came in sight. Waving, he jogged over to them, the bottom of his unbuttoned coat flapping in a slightly comical way as he moved, like a giant bat.

            “Eddie!” squealed Iris. Turning to Hannah she quickly explained that Eddie was her boyfriend and they had been dating for about a year and a half, just as Eddie arrived in front of them.

            “Hello,” he said, his voice deep and rough, but pleasant enough. “I’m Eddie Thawne. Who might you be?”

            “Hannah, Hannah Graves,” Hannah replied, holding out her hand to shake. Eddie smiled warmly at her, as Iris jumped in.

            “I met Hannah in the coffee shop today. I was bringing her to meet Barry, she’s a forensic scientist too, and I thought they might have something in common to talk about. Where is he, babe?”

            Eddie turned his smile towards Iris, its intensity rising by double. It became very quickly the smile of a man who is so in love his body doesn’t have enough outlets to show it all. Hannah thought she had never really understood the expression “his smile didn’t fit on his face” quite until that moment.

            “He’s upstairs, babe,” Eddie replied, indicating inside and up a huge marble staircase in the main lobby. He snaked an arm around Iris as he continued, directing the words at Hannah now. “Go all the way up those stairs, second hall on the left, and then first door on the right. It shouldn’t be too hard to find.” Hannah recognised this as a non too subtle way of telling her to leave the other two alone. Iris began to protest, saying that she had to introduce Hannah to Barry, but Hannah shut this down quickly. She was perfectly capable of introducing herself (which she wasn’t, and the knots in her stomach tightened painfully at the thought, but she knew she should go by herself and let Eddie say whatever he needed to say to Iris). She smiled at the pair of them and then said she’d go and get Barry and meet them back at the front door in twenty minutes. Eddie nodded his thanks, and Iris squeezed her hand, then they were both lost in each other.

Hannah turned to the enormous wooden doors that were set into the marble building, and couldn’t help but think that this building couldn’t be anymore intimidating if it tried. Not to mention it was full of police officers carrying guns. Nevertheless, she strode into the lobby with an air of confidence so well faked she almost fooled herself. Up the stairs, second corridor on the left, and the first door on the right. The first door on the right turned out to be a large door, suitable for a garage of some sort. Hannah found herself in a lab of sorts, and the familiar chemicals and equipment immediately relaxed her. A small cough from the corner of the room jolted her from her thoughts back to reality and she jumped. A deep, rich, laugh came from the direction of the cough, and a young man walked forwards past the shelves to where Hannah could see him. She almost wished he hadn’t, as her stomach tightened unbearably again and she felt her knees go strangely weak.

            Barry Allen was a tall, gangly, young man, whose presence in a space was both calming and electrifying all at once. His slightly child-like face was filled with a grin that Hannah was certain was causing that weak-at-the-knees feeling. His pearly white, straight, teeth shone out at her in an almost lopsided way, making it impossible for her not to smile back. But it was his eyes that really intrigued her. They sparkled, a clear green flecked with bits of gold, offering promises of mischief and hope, that Hannah had long given up on. As she met his eyes, Hannah felt a shock go through her, almost like she had been struck by lightning. This was _meant_ to happen. She couldn’t explain how she knew, any more than a two year old could explain quantum mechanics, but she knew beyond any doubt that Barry Allen would be a big part of her life from this moment onwards.

            Barry cleared his throat again, the laugh bubbling away like a cheerful brook that has found some other more exciting path to explore than its current one. When he spoke again his voice carried a kindness in it that most people do not have, and his smile never faltered.

            “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I wasn’t expecting company,” he paused, raising his eyebrows in question. Hannah shook her head to clear it and remembered why she was there. Had she not, she was certain she could have stared at his perfectly gorgeous face for all eternity.

            “Right, yes, of course. Sorry. I’m Hannah Graves; I’m a… friend of Iris’s.” The latter was said with reluctance, as Hannah felt uncomfortable calling herself Iris’s friend after knowing her only a day. But she needn’t have worried at all. Barry had obviously not heard a word after her name. His face light up like a tree on Christmas day, and he bounded forward to shake her hand.

            “No way! _The_ Hannah Graves?! You’re a legend in the forensics world. Or maybe not the _whole_ forensics world, but… well… wow! Your work down at Comet Labs – totally unparalleled! I can’t believe I’m meeting you…” During this excited outburst he had been furiously pumping her hand up and down, all the while Hannah smiling to herself shyly. However now, the last thing she had said registered with him, and he released her hand slowly. Hannah let go reluctantly, unwilling to relinquish the skin-to-skin contact that was causing her to feel like an exploding firework.

            “Did you say you were friends with Iris?” Barry enquired. Hannah nodded, slowly, and then opened her mouth to elaborate, only to be cut off by Barry going into overdrive again. “Well, she’s probably downstairs then, right/” Hannah nodded again, but she didn’t think Barry even noticed. He certainly didn’t slow down to acknowledge it. “So we should get going then. She’ll be with Eddie of course, so we can all fit in his car. Assuming Joe isn’t coming with us, but of course he isn’t he went home two hours ago. Come on!” While he had been talking, Barry had been rushing around the room gathering his things, and tidying (sort of) as he went. The last comment was combined with him grabbing Hannah by the hand and pulling her behind him out of the door. He didn’t let go as the two of them practically flew back down the marble staircase to the front door. Hannah found later that she couldn’t remember how they had got from his lab to the front door of the HQ, as she had been too busy focusing on his hand in hers and how good it felt.

            Eddie and Iris were where Hannah had left them twenty minutes earlier. They greeted Barry each with a friendly smile, and then motioned for Hannah and Barry to follow them to the car. Hannah did not miss Iris’s wink when she noticed that Barry still hadn’t let go of her hand. 


	3. Work with me?

 

The car was smaller than Hannah had expected. It certainly wasn’t shabby by any means, but the sleek green saloon wasn’t what she had imagined a police officer owning. She put it down to watching far too many American “cop” shows. Not that she exactly minded being squished against Barry in the backseat, while Iris took the passenger seat (there was an exchange between Barry and Iris before they got in about who got to “ride shotgun”. Hannah made a mental note to ask Iris what exactly this meant later.) Eddie drove. The car was pleasantly warm and Barry had snaked his arm (a little awkwardly at first) around Hannah’s shoulders, so she sank her head onto his shoulder. He jumped at the contact, and she went to pull away again, shocked at herself for being so forward with a man she had met only half an hour ago. But he shook his head, and pulled his arm tighter around her, with more confidence than before, so Hannah settled back down; feeling his warmth and joy radiate around her like it was a blanket. Conversation in the car was limited to Iris talking and the others agreeing where appropriate (Hannah made another mental note to ask Barry if this was normal or if it was because Hannah had done something to make Iris – what was the American term? – “freak out”.)

            “You know, I forgot to ask, where are we going exactly, babe?” Iris suddenly announced, interrupting her own flow of words to address Eddie directly.

            “I thought we could all use a drink, so I was aiming for the bar?” Eddie started this as a statement, but upon turning his head and noting Iris’s face, he ended it as a question. Hannah couldn’t help but think that it was obvious who wore the trousers in _that_ relationship. But Iris’s face soon relaxed back into a smile, and Eddie continued on his course. Barry was the only one who thought to ask Hannah if she had other plans.

            “Are you sure you’re ok with this?” he whispered in her ear. Hannah nodded back, a tiny smile on her face, knowing full well that if she opened her mouth she would be most definitely embarrassed by whatever she said. Barry was having an effect on her that could only be compared to one too many tequila shots; slightly wobbly and almost certainly going to end with saying something stupid. Barry however seemed to be completely oblivious to the torment he was causing, and grinned at Hannah, a full-on beaming smile that was 100% _not helping_.

            “Good,” he whispered through his smile, “I was really hoping you’d stick around for a while.” Hannah’s stomach did a flip and she was again reminded of the tequila analogy, which was apparently becoming more accurate by the second.

            The bar, when they arrived, was dark and full of people. Hannah shrank back in the entrance hallway, all of her confidence leaking out of her onto the floor, leaving her a shivering, terrified, wreck. So back to normal then, she supposed. She could feel her throat tightening even as she stood there taking in the noise and the mass of people that were all dancing (if you could call standing very close together and jumping up and down with your fist in the air “dancing”). The panic attack was imminent, when she suddenly felt a hand on the small of her back, strong and sure. She concentrated on the five fingers spread gently across her lower back, and felt the panic melt away like a bad dream. Turning slowly, she met Barry’s eyes shyly, noting the concerned edge that tinged the green and gold.

            “Are you alright?” he asked gently. Iris and Eddie had gone on ahead and were already ordering drinks at the crowded bar, but Barry showed no signs of wanting to join them. In fact, the way he was looking at her in that moment, made Hannah feel like she was the only person in the entire world who mattered. It was making her head spin (and she was back to the tequila analogy again…). “Come on,” said Barry, who had not removed his hand and now was using it to guide her back out of the building into the night air. Hannah breathed it in gratefully, releasing her feelings of claustrophobia along with her exhale.

            “Thank you,” she whispered. She was not entirely sure why she was talking in such a low voice, but it felt appropriate. And she also knew, instinctively, that Barry would understand that.

            “You’re welcome Hannah,” he replied, sending a thousand shivers down her spine as he said her name. She thought about telling him how much she had hated her name all her life, until he spoke it, but being the sort of person that she was, she kept it to herself, for now at least.

            “You know, I never did get to tell you why I came to see you,” she began, after a few moments recomposing herself.

            “That is very true. I suppose I got a bit carried away! Sorry about that by the way, I didn’t mean to embarrass you or anything. I have some problems with slowing myself down these days,” Barry grinned at that last comment, as if it was a private joke with himself.

            “You didn’t embarrass me… much,” Hannah grinned up at Barry, noting to herself about the height difference, and wondering how he would respond if she pushed herself up on her toes and… She cut off her own thought. What was she _doing_?! This wasn’t like her at all. No nonsense, straight-laced Hannah was not the sort of person to go around wondering what it would be like to kiss someone she had only just met! “I’m not really used to people knowing who I am, that’s all,” she explained, hoping Barry couldn’t see her blush.

            “Really?” He sounded astonished. “I can’t believe that. I mean, your work with the police cadets is so intricate, I’ve been begging to go down and watch for ages!” Hannah smiled at his enthusiasm, and then remembered why she was talking to Barry in the first place.

            “Well you’ve missed your chance I’m afraid,” she said, the smile turning slightly bitter. Barry looked confused, so she clarified. “The lab was shut down yesterday. The government apparently decided we were too expensive to keep running.” She lowered her eyes to the ground, not wanting him to notice the tears that were forming there.

            “Oh, Hannah I’m so sorry,” Barry said. He took her hand gently and squeezed it. “I guess that means…”

            “Yes. I believe the government would now refer to me as a ‘budget cut’,” she finished for him, trying (and failing) to make a joke of it. Not wanting to spend any more time wallowing in self pity, she took her hand out of his (albeit reluctantly). “Actually, that was why I came to see you in the first place. Iris thought you might be able to…” she trailed off, suddenly embarrassed at the request. “I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous, I can’t believe I even thought that was an acceptable idea. Don’t worry about it,” Hannah said, attempting to brush it off, but Barry was having none of it.

            “You wanted me to find you a job?” He sounded incredulous, and Hannah’s embarrassment (and if she was being honest, disappointment) magnified tenfold.

            “I’m so sorry, I know that’s a terrible thing to ask of someone I’ve only just met, and…” Hannah never got to finish the sentence, because Barry cut her off.

            “Of course I can find you a job! Actually there’s a position for a forensic scientist to work alongside me right now, I would be happy to recommend you to the Chief! That is, if you’re alright working with me as a lab partner?” He looked at her intensely, as if he really expected her to say no. Instead, Hannah felt her face open up into the biggest smile she could manage, and opened her mouth to thank him, but found no words would come out. In her happiness she was completely speechless. So she told him the only way she could. Barry hugged her back just as tightly, which made her feel like he was breaking more than one of her ribs, but she couldn’t care less. The sparks he was causing to fly through her were so intense she thought they would be visible against the navy night sky, like a sparkler on November 5th. She stood up on her tiptoes and whispered into his ear.

            “Thank you Barry Allen. You are wonderful.” She felt his answering smile press into her shoulder, but his reply nearly knocked her off her feet.

            “Not as wonderful as you Hannah Graves.”


	4. Promise of Tomorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a little bit shorter, but I felt I needed to finish the evening off before I moved on to the next portion of the story! It's very fluffy, so enjoy :D

The two of them eventually made their way back inside to the bar where Eddie and Iris sat (a decision that was made more by Barry noticing Hannah shivering from the cold than either of them actually _wanting_ to go in). It didn’t look like the other couple had been exactly waiting for Barry and Hannah to join them. On the contrary, they were in full lip-lock mode when the latter two joined them and it took Barry clearing his throat twice for them to emerge. Hannah stifled her giggle behind her hand, and carefully avoided Barry’s gaze, knowing full well that if she met it they would both fall on the floor laughing. The four of them ordered a round of drinks and Hannah felt almost comfortable, despite the claustrophobic environment. She tried (and completely failed) to deny that it had anything to do with the presence of the man sitting next to her, his hand often brushing hers in silent support. She tried (and completely failed) to convince herself that it was the job she was excited about, not working with Barry specifically. And she tried (and completely, and utterly failed) to not smile back every single time Barry turned his beaming grin in her direction. But really, all of this wasn’t doing her any harm, and by the end of the evening she realised she was having more fun than she could ever remember having.

            It was after midnight when the party finally decided to call it a night. Hannah surprised herself by feeling sorry to leave, and allowed herself to enjoy the possibility that this might happen again sometime soon. Iris hugged her goodbye with a promise to meet her for lunch at Jitters the next day, and Eddie shook her hand somewhat awkwardly. Barry walked her out and, when it was established that the two of them lived at the same end of town, offered to share a taxi with her (well, he said “cab” but it amounted to the same thing), allowing Iris and Eddie to have the car to themselves. Barry hailed a taxi with a whistle that Hannah could not deny was impressive, and held the door open for her as they climbed in. He told the driver where to go, and then moved in closer to her, letting her put her head on his shoulder like they had before.

            “So I think if you came to the precinct tomorrow, I could introduce you to the chief,” Barry said after a while.

            “That sounds lovely. Thank you again, by the way,” Hannah smiled up at him, feeling more at ease than she had in a long time. Barry circled his arm around her shoulders and smiled back.

            “Not a problem. I’m so excited that we’ll be working together,” he replied.

            “Me too,” Hannah whispered, almost as though she was scared to admit it out loud. But Barry heard her, and his heart leaped with joy. Not that he would have told Hannah that, but he couldn’t deny the sparks he felt every time they touched, and had spent the entire evening finding any excuse for their hands to brush. He loved making her smile too, each one seeming like a rare treasure he had worked hard to earn, making it all the more valuable. He filed them away in his head, so that he could get them out again later and examine each one like a precious jewel. He almost physically shivered with delight when he thought about the possibility of them working side by side every day. And he might have imagined it, but he thought he saw that anticipation and excitement reflected back at him in her eyes when she looked at him.

            The taxi arrived at her house all too soon. Barry got out and walked her to the front door. Hannah felt like screaming at him to stay, but satisfied herself for now with a hug. He hugged her back, tightly, and she hoped more than anything that he felt the energy that flowed between their tangled bodies. He, at the same time, was hoping the exact same thing.

            “I had a really, really, great time tonight Barry,” Hannah admitted when she finally broke away. Barry didn’t miss the genuine gratitude in her tone, or the implication that this wasn’t a regular occurrence for her.

            “Me too,” he replied. Then he felt an unusual burst of confidence, and before he fully realised what he was doing, he was adding, “Maybe we could do it again some time?” He held her gaze steadily, not realising he was also holding his breath.

            “I would love that.” Hannah leant in to kiss his cheek, in a rare moment of self-confidence, shocking herself. “Goodnight Barry Allen.” She smiled at him.

            “Goodnight Hannah,” he replied, letting out his breath in a sigh that sounded almost wistful. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

            Hannah watched him go, her heart feeling like it would burst, and then let herself into her flat. It was a modest, but pretty place, and Hannah had always been fond of it. However, tonight it felt like a glittering palace and she felt like a returning princess. She had known Barry Allen for a grand total of six hours, and he had won her heart in the first six seconds. Shaking her head she wondered what her mother would think about all of this, and with that thought she slipped into bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

            It wasn’t until Barry got home and was undressing for bed that the piece of paper fell out of his jacket pocket. He unfolded it with anticipation and thrilled at what he saw written there.

            _Thought you might want to contact me at some point. This should help! I look forward to seeing you tomorrow xx H_

This was followed by a number that Barry immediately transferred into his phone. He put the note on his bedside cabinet, and had read it fourteen times before he fell into a sleep peppered with pleasant dreams of girls with flaming hair and a constellation of freckles. 


	5. I Will Not Abandon You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long! I've been super busy! But it is a little longer than usual to make up for it, and more will be on the way really soon. I'm on a roll with this story now, expect it to be long when it is done!!!

“He totally loved you! I’ve not seen him smile that much since… well, ever!” Barry chattered excitedly. “Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile, full stop!”

            Hannah laughed, covering her mouth with her hand to stop the sound escaping too loudly. The two of them were walking up the staircase in the precinct again, having just come out of a meeting with the police chief. Barry had generously got an interview with him straight away, and within twenty minutes the job was hers. Hannah still couldn’t believe the admiration with which Barry spoke about her work, and she was immensely grateful for it.

            “Than-” she tried again, but Barry was having none of it. Immediately placing his hand where hers had been but seconds before, he cut her off with a shake of his head.

            “I’m not going through it again Hannah! You don’t need to thank me, it will be my honour and my pleasure to work with you,” He smiled at her, taking away his hand from her mouth to let her speak again. Hannah couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed at the loss of contact, but her smile was soon back up and running as Barry launched into a story about one of his first crime scenes. He had apparently been running late and… (Hannah had made a mental note about this, as almost all of his stories started with “I was running late and…” implying that he was almost always late for everything. She wanted to ask Iris if she was correct in that assumption, because if she was, it made the fact that Barry was _early_ this morning for their appointment _much_ more interesting.) She laughed out loud when he finished, and started to tell a story of her own about one time that she framed her boss for a fake crime by accident by mixing up the fingerprint samples. As she spoke she watched his face and felt her heart skip beats as he grinned and laughed along with her. Hannah felt so relaxed and comfortable around Barry, it was as if she had been transported to a parallel universe where her anxiety just didn’t exist. She hadn’t stopped smiling all morning since he had met her at the precinct with a to-go hot chocolate with extra cream (which she especially loved because it meant he had been listening when she had told him it was her favourite drink – apart from tea – and he had taken the time out of his day to go and get it for her). He had a coffee (latte with a shot of caramel she noted, filing that information away for another time), and they had gone into the office together. When he noticed how her hands were shaking with nerves, he took one of them in his own and began to tell her anecdotes and jokes to make her laugh. And Hannah couldn’t believe that she had got so lucky as to be allowed to work with this man side by side for the foreseeable future!

            Barry, meanwhile, was busy studying the freckles on Hannah’s nose and memorising the shapes they made. Every so often she would catch him staring and he surprised himself by not looking away immediately, instead choosing to hold her gaze and lose himself in her lovely hazel brown eyes until she turned her head away again. He had stopped at the coffee shop on the way in that morning, begging that he had remembered her order correctly (having decided that tea would need to wait until after she had shown him how, not wanting to end up on the wrong end of the tea-rant she had delivered yesterday at the bar). The smile she had given him when he handed her the cup was a prize that he would cherish, and to his delight that smile had stayed there for the majority of the morning. He was ecstatic when the chief had agreed to let Hannah have the job, and was now eagerly bounding up the stairs with her in tow, wondering to himself what he did to deserve the wonderful luck the universe was bringing him.

            It was of course this precise moment that the universe went back to normal and decided to make Barry the butt of another joke. His phone rang in the middle of Hannah’s story, and when he saw the caller ID he reluctantly told her that he would meet her upstairs. Her bemused and slightly offended look would have hurt him more deeply if it wasn’t so goddamn cute. He filed away another mental picture of her wrinkling her nose as he ducked into an empty room to take the call.

            “This had better be good Caitlin.”

            “Sorry! I really am, I know you’re busy at work, but there’s a fire on 13th Avenue, and there’s a little girl on the top floor, and…” Dr. Caitlin Snow never got to the end of that sentence. Before she could finish a whooshing noise, accompanied by a large gust of wind, had delivered Barry Allen to her side at Star Labs.

            “Stop apologising Caitlin,” Barry grinned at her for a moment before another whoosh took the Flash out of the room and zooming off to 13th Avenue.

            “Okay, so the girl is in the master bedroom of the apartment with the top left hand window,” Cisco starts directing through Barry’s earpiece. Caitlin shakes herself out of her thoughts (which had once again wandered dangerously close to that locked drawer in her head marked ‘Barry - Shirtless’) and picked up her own headset to join in.

            “You’re going to need to be careful on the third floor, there’s a problem with rotten floorboards, so the fire’s taken out half of the flooring.”

            “Got it,” Barry’s answer came through with noises of crackling and spitting flames, and Caitlin felt her heart jump in her chest as it always did in the moments of him being in immediate danger. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to separate him from Ronnie in her head, and every single time that Barry came home with another injury she was transported back to the night that she lost her fiancé, thinking over and over again about what she would do if Barry didn’t make it back the next time. But before she had finished having her small moment of panic, she heard Barry confirm over the radio that the little girl was safe and that he was on his way back to the lab. A few seconds later, the Flash came to a halt by her side once more.

            Brushing her now windswept hair out of her face, Caitlin gave Barry a quick once over to check for injuries, steadfastly ignoring the grin that stretched across his face, as a lioness might ignore a particularly annoying fly on her face – unsuccessfully.

            “What are you smiling at?” she eventually demanded, hand on hip in typical this-is-my-angry-face Caitlin style.

            “Nothing, you’re just really adorable when you’re grumpy at me,” Barry countered with a wink. Caitlin felt her face relax into a smile of her own, almost against her will - but only almost.

            Barry was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and having changed back into his regular clothing, it gave him the effect of being a nervous schoolboy. Caitlin felt herself smiling a little wider at him. Then a frown creased his forehead, and her smile disappeared instantly. What was wrong? Was he in pain? Had she done something stupid or embarrassing? Did she have pen on her face again? But these fears were all laid to rest within a second as Barry exclaimed to the room at large.

            “I have to get back to work,” he paused and looked down at her again, “unless you need me for anything else?” Caitlin shook her head, more in bafflement than in answer to his question. Since when was Barry excited to go back to normal work? Because the emotion playing so clearly across his face was most definitely excitement. Maybe she could run a test on that? Or, she added to herself after another moment’s thought, she could just ask Cisco what he thought about it.

            By the time this thought had fully processed in her brain, Barry had once again gone. Caitlin shook her head and wondered if she would ever get used to working with the fastest man alive.

            Barry meanwhile was back at the precinct, smoothing out his shirt and attempting to calm his racing heart (which he thought was slightly ironic as most people would need to breathe deeply because they’d been running, while he was having trouble breathing because of what he was running _to_.) When he got up the stairs (mounting them two at a time) and rounded the corner to the door of the lab he paused for a second to watch the vision that greeted him. Hannah had made herself quite at home and was now standing by the window, where she had placed a miniature rose bush, singing softly to herself as she took in the view. Barry had a fleeting thought that the view was much better from where he was standing, before he pushed through the door and coughed to announce his arrival. Hannah whirled around, startled, her mass of bright red curls flying around her head like a halo. Barry couldn’t help but compare her to an angel, the brilliant sunshine lighting her from behind with an almost ethereal glow.

            “Oh! Hi! You made me jump!” She said, smiling in that shy and almost-invisible way of hers.

            “Sorry!” Barry held up his hands as if in surrender, “I had to take a call. I see you’ve moved in already,” he added, gesturing to the desk in the corner that had previously been covered in paper work. The paperwork was now neatly stacked in piles in the corner of the room (Barry had a sneaking suspicion that Hannah had sorted it into alphabetical order) and the desk was now adorned with her work things: a bright green stapler, a small pile of manila folders (all labelled correctly of course), a pot of pens and pencils, a notebook (open to a clean page with today’s date written in the right hand top corner – as though she expected the teacher to come and check she was laying out her work properly any moment now), and blue touch screen tablet on a stand.

            “Yes, I hope you don’t mind?” Hannah looked worried again, a little frown creasing her forehead right at the top of her ski-slope nose as she surveyed her new work space.

            “Of course, that’s totally fine!” Barry rushed to reassure her. “Did you sort my files?” he wondered aloud, pointing to the piles on the floor.

            Hannah looked a bit uncomfortable and then gave a half shrug. “Yes, I did. Is that okay? I mean, I can put them back the way they were, I just thought that they were a bit unorganised, and I was trying to help, and they were in the way so…” she trailed off, feeling the all-too-familiar pain of a panic attack constricting her throat as she considered the fact that she might have done something wrong. She hadn’t had permission to move the files, or to touch anything at all really, but she has only been trying to help. She couldn’t bear to leave things untidy; it was something that really pulled at the anxiety in her stomach. She wasn’t so obsessive that everything had to be cleaned forty times or that it all had to be at right angles, she was lucky enough not to have that sort of disorder, but neatness was something she needed in her life, and she _did_ have a bit of a thing for symmetry…

            In the midst of all this, Barry had had a realisation. He moved quickly to the water cooler by the door and poured out a cup of cold water, and then crossed back over to hand it to Hannah, who by now had put a hand up to her throat and seemed to be physically choking. As she took the water from him, he placed a hand gently in the middle of her back and moved his thumb around in little circles. It was meant as a comfort, but whether it was for her or for him was anyone’s guess. After an agonising few minutes, the panic attack slowed and passed. Hannah straightened up and briskly moved herself away from Barry into her corner of the room. He took a step to go after her, but stopped himself realising that she must be feeling embarrassed and needed her space for a second. If he was being honest with himself, he should have noticed this earlier. He had seen her tense up when they arrived at the bar yesterday, but he had assumed that it was just nerves. God, he felt like such an idiot! He could have stopped that last attack if he had just _thought_ about what he was saying for a moment. It was just like Joe was always telling him; he truly had no brain-to-mouth filter.

            “Sorry,” said a small voice from the corner. Barry looked up with a start, jolted from his thoughts by the pain in her voice. “Sometimes I just…” she stopped, unable to continue, or maybe just not knowing what to say. But Barry understood completely.

            “In college, I had a roommate,” he began, “and every so often we would go to a party. He usually dragged me, I wasn’t really the partying type. But one day while we were at one of these parties, I met another guy, kind of like me. He didn’t really want to be there either, so we took our drinks outside and just sat on the grass talking. It was good. Then all of a sudden, everyone else was outside too. The music was really loud again, and the people were crowding round us. He started to hyperventilate almost immediately. I thought he was choking on something. And like the idiot I am I just stood there, totally helpless. The only thing I did was to get people to back up and give him some air. I eventually got him away from everyone else again, and his breathing eased up. Then he explains to me that he has an anxiety disorder that causes him to have panic attacks when he is confronted with unexpected noise or large crowds of people. That was why he felt so uncomfortable at parties.” Barry stopped talking and looked up at Hannah, who was staring at him with wide, shining eyes. She understood what he was saying perfectly.

            “I get it,” he added lamely, as if it really needed saying.

            “Thank you,” she replied, earnestly. Turning away from him, she wiped away the tears that were forming in her eyes, feeling the rush of colour to her cheeks with her embarrassment. She had worried that it would be like last time, like with Jake… No. She didn’t think about him anymore, or any of that. It wouldn’t be like that this time. Barry understood. Barry wasn’t going to judge her, or tell her she was dramatic, or crazy. And Barry wasn’t going to abandon her for her disorder.

            “It isn’t your fault you know.” Barry had broken the silence with the words that Hannah needed to hear most of all. How he could have known that… well she didn’t care. He crossed the room to her side again, putting a hand on her shoulder and bending down a little to look straight into her sparkling eyes. His green and gold was reflected back at him in her hazel, and he noted the two or three streaks of black that spread out from her pupils like shooting stars. “I am not going to hold this against you in any way. It changes nothing between us,” he told her, sincerely. Then realising what he had just said he mentally whacked himself across the face and aloud added, “At work I mean.”

            “Oh right, at work.” Was he imagining things, or was that a flicker of disappointment in her eyes? But it was gone in a second and she turned away from him sharply. But then she turned back and he could hear every ounce of sincerity in her voice as she said, “Thank you Barry. I cannot tell you how much that means to me, truly.”

            After that the two of them got to work and Hannah ended up postponing her lunch date with Iris, as she and Barry had sandwiches in the lab, not wanting to stop working for lunch. She spent the day feeling bright and cheerful, inside and out, steadfastly ignoring the tiny nagging part of her that reminded her of Barry’s words. They were just colleagues, and it was good that he had reminded her of that. She had to control herself, and obviously if she didn’t it wouldn’t end well, because he wasn’t interested. She must have been imagining things the night before.

            Barry meanwhile spent the day trying to take back those words, without saying anything. He didn’t want to seem too eager, and he really didn’t want to ruin their blooming friendship before it had even begun. But he also hadn’t meant to shut down any possibilities so quickly.

And so it went for the next three weeks, the two of them settling comfortably into a routine. He brought her hot chocolate and his coffee, she would bring him a homemade muffin (he learned early on that baking was a stress-reliever for her, something he could _definitely_ live with!). She would write while he experimented, and then after lunch they would switch over. They joked and laughed, and were very good friends. Until, three weeks into their relationship, Hannah asked Barry why he kept disappearing.


	6. Tell You Everything

It was a typical morning for the two of them. Barry met Hannah at the doors of the precinct with her hot chocolate and his latte (Iris had answered Hannah’s query about him being early every day with a raised eyebrow, to which Hannah’s stomach did a little flip. He had been early to work every single day since Hannah started there, to the point that the Chief and Joe kept making jokes to him about him wanting to be there all of a sudden). They walked inside together (Barry spending the whole time pulling his hands out of his pockets to take hers and then deciding against it and shoving them away again), and then they got to work in the lab.

He was setting up the third experiment of the day when he got a phone call from Caitlin. Hannah looked up at the, now very familiar, ringtone. And she felt her heart drop out of her chest as it did every time she heard that tune. Because after three weeks of knowing the most wonderful human being on earth, she was convinced he was also the most taken man on earth. Every single time that the girl rang, he disappeared with no explanation. Every. Single. Time. And the only reason that Hannah could fathom for that, was that Barry Allen had a girlfriend, and a demanding one at that. Although that probably wasn’t fair. Maybe she was dying and he had to go every time she called because if he didn’t he might never see her again?! Okay that was a stretch of the imagination, even for her. She heard Barry take a breath and knew the words before he even said them.

            “Sorry, I’ve got to-”

            “Take that? I figured,” Hannah interrupted, nodding at the phone with a wry smile (although she suspected that the wryness of it was suspiciously close to bitterness, but she hoped he wouldn’t pick up on that). Barry smiled his apology at her and left the room, shrugging on his jacket as he went out. Hannah couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of pain knowing that he was going to skip out on her for the next fifteen minute to half an hour and he didn’t even bother to say goodbye. But as she had done every time before this one, she decided there was nothing she could do about it, and went back to her work.

By the time that Barry got back, Hannah had written up four full lab reports, done three Sudoku puzzles, and had loaded an entirely new album onto her iPod. She was singing to it when he walked back into the lab. She didn’t notice him at first, the ear-buds blocking the entire world out, apart from the lyrics of Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer (ironic, she knew). So there she stood at the window, watering her roses, and there he stood just inside the doorway, completely entranced by her. Barry later thought that there was not a single thing on this earth that he could compare Hannah’s singing to. To him it was beyond beautiful, beyond words or any form of description other than it left him speechless and in a state of wondrous awe. In that moment however, all he could do was stand as still as possible, holding his breath in an effort not to disturb her and break the spell.

Hannah, for her part, was not noticing Barry to the very best of her ability. In fact, she was very subtly trying to make him uncomfortable by making him stand there while she ignored him for the longest time possible, as revenge for him disappearing on her for an hour and a half. (This of course wasn’t working very well, as Barry was enjoying standing there being unnoticed much more than he should have been. He was making several mental notes about the pretty colour of Hannah’s hair in the sunlight, and had discovered a new appreciation for skinny jeans…) When the song reached its end, Hannah found she could stand it no longer, and whirled around to face her lab partner with a look on her face that would have terrified a lioness into submission. She had made a decision in that split second, and if she thought about it too much she would change her mind and become very embarrassed, but she wasn’t thinking, she was feeling and this felt right.

“Barry, where have you been?” she asked, the tone of her voice betraying her anger and hurt in contrast to the seemingly innocent question.

“I, uh, I’ve been, um…” Barry faltered.

“Exactly. You know, you left me here for an hour and a half, which is a new record so congratulations on that, to cover for you and do almost all of the work we were supposed to do today. By myself, Barry.”

“I am so sorry, Hannah. Really, tell me how I can make it up to you and I will.” Barry looked so upset for hurting her that she almost backed down, but as her anger left her, the pain stayed behind to manifest itself more clearly.

“Look, I don’t mind covering for you, at all! I don’t even mind working by myself, I mean I’m used to it. No-one has _ever_ wanted to work with me, so this is nothing new. But I thought we were friends, Barry! So it _is_ different when you run off, because I didn’t care, much, about the others. But I like… I like being your friend Barry. But I guess I should probably take the hint already, huh?” The tears were threatening by now, and Hannah felt some of her anger returning to her, as it always did when she cried. But the anger wasn’t at Barry; it was at herself for being so completely weak. That was what Jake always said when she cried during an argument, _“Your emotions control you! You’re so weak! You disgust me!”_ Of course later he would apologise and say he never meant it but…. NO! Jake had no part in this. Barry wasn’t Jake. Barry had promised he wouldn’t leave her, wouldn’t abandon her for how she was. But he kept disappearing and she couldn’t deal with that any more.

“You know what, if you don’t want me to know where you go every time your girlfriend calls you, fine. But don’t bother with the hot chocolate tomorrow. If you don’t want to be friends with me, don’t keep pretending, Barry.” The tears spilled over then, and she pushed past a shocked and silent Barry into the hallway trying to find a bathroom where she could hide away to cry in peace. But through the blur, she couldn’t remember which way the bathroom was. After a few moments she realised she was running down corridors she didn’t recognise, so she stopped. Utterly defeated, she slid down the wall and sank onto the floor, burying her face in her hands. What had she been thinking? Why was it any of her business where Barry went? What if he never wanted to talk to her again after this? Would she be fired? After all, it was his lab in the first place. Would Iris hate her? What if Barry hated her? Hannah realised very quickly, upon picturing it, that life without Barry Allen in it would be unbearable to the extreme. Oh, God.

            “Hannah! Thank god, I found you! You know, you can really run? I looked in twelve other corridors before I got to this one? And I was only a few seconds behind you!”

            Hannah’s head shot up, so fast that she hit the back of it on the wall she was leaning against. Ouch, she thought rubbing at it with her fingers.

            “Oh my gosh, I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to make you jump! Are you okay?” Barry asked, crouching down in front of her, and going to reach out to check her head, but then thinking better of it and pulling his hand away. “Are you okay?” he repeated, “Your head, I mean.” His voice was soft and soothing, like the slow breaking of ocean waves against the sand.

            “Yes, it’s fine, thanks,” Hannah replied, equally quietly. She became suddenly aware of how close he was to her, and how tear-stained her face must be. Oh, please God don’t let there be any snot on her face.

            “I’m so sorry, Hannah. I really, really am. I didn’t realise how awful I was being, and I should have. I would never want to push you away at all, and I have been. I want you to be able to trust me, but that isn’t going to happen if I keep secrets all the time. So, here’s the deal. I am going to tell you everything you want to know, if you promise never to look at me like that again, because if you do I think it might kill me. Okay?” This time, Barry didn’t stop as his hand reached out to brush against her cheek softly. _Oh if I were a glove upon that hand, that I may touch that cheek_ , Barry thought distantly, absently wondering why it was now that his high school study of _Romeo and Juliet_ had chosen to come back to him. Not that it was really any great mystery.

            “Okay,” Hannah finally said.

            “Good,” Barry smiled at her again, taking his hand from her cheek and helping her to her feet. “Come on, we’ll go back to the lab, shut everything down for the day, and then I will tell you everything, I promise.”

            Hannah smiled back at him this time, a tiny shred of hope fighting its way to the forefront of the panic and fear and hurt that made up the majority of her life. It sat down on the ground, right in the middle at the front of the crowd, and she knew it wasn’t going to move for a long while to come.


	7. Revealing Secrets

Half an hour later, the two of them were sitting opposite each other at one of the tables in the middle of the lab. Hannah cradled a mug of tea with both hands (on the second day of her employment at the precinct she had decided she needed her own kettle at work. It sat proudly in the corner of her desk, under which was a mini fridge with milk in it).

            “So,” Barry began, opening his own hands wide in a gesture of peace, “What is it you want to know?”

            “Who calls you every day, just before you suddenly disappear?” Hannah asked, surprising both Barry and herself with her choice of opening question. She tried to tell herself she was starting off gently, but in reality she knew she just wanted to hear him say it was his girlfriend so that she could stop wondering. The wondering was probably doing her more harm than him disappearing all the time.

            “Her name is Caitlin. She works at Star Labs,” Barry started, noting Hannah’s look of shock when he mentioned the place that the world assumed destroyed. But he held up a hand to keep her quiet for a moment longer, and she nodded for him to continue. “She’s a co-worker of mine, in a way. We’re part of a team that works over there, but I only work there part-time.” Hannah opened her mouth to ask something else, but Barry pre-empted the question adding, “No, she is not my girlfriend.”

            The surprised look on Hannah’s face at this last part, made Barry laugh as he tried to imagine him and Caitlin as a couple. He couldn’t believe that Hannah had thought… Then suddenly his brain fit the pieces together and he realised with a jolt the real reason that Hannah had been so upset about him disappearing. She thought he had a girlfriend, and it was making her sad… which meant that she liked him! The euphoria spread through him like melting butter on toast and his grin grew wider than he even thought was possible. (If he had had a mirror at that precise moment, he probably would have noticed that he looked exactly the same way that Eddie did every time he looked at Iris).

            “Really? So, you don’t have a girlfriend?” Hannah asked tentatively, interrupting Barry’s moment of victory in his head (which completely confirmed it for him, because if that was what she chose to ask out of all the information he had just given her, she was totally into him!)

            “No, I definitely do not have a girlfriend,” Barry replied, throwing in a wink for emphasis. Then he thought he might be taking things a bit too far, so he quickly added “Next question?”

            Hannah thought for a second and then said, “So Star Labs is where you go every day?”

            “Yeah, we do a lot of research based on the fallout of the particle accelerator explosion.”

            “Oh. What kind of research?”

            Ok, this was the moment that Barry had worried about. He wanted to tell Hannah the truth, no matter what, but he worried about what might happen to her if she knew. He couldn’t live with himself if she got hurt. But he had promised to tell her everything….

            “I will tell you what we do exactly, but you have to promise you will not freak out on me, okay? And you also need to know that if I tell you this, it might put you in danger. So you have to tell me that you are sure you want to know, because I’m not one hundred percent sure you do.” Barry held his breath as he waited for her answer, but he needn’t have bothered, it was exactly as he expected.

            “Of course I want to know! I can handle myself against… danger. And I promise not to ‘freak out’,” Hannah replied, adding her best American twang to the last sentence, making both of them laugh.

            “All right then. If you’re sure,” Barry paused for a moment until Hannah nodded firmly and he sighed in defeat. He would just have to protect her, that’s all. And he wanted to do that anyway, so it was fine. Gesturing for her to follow him, he lead the way out of the lab and into the car park behind the precinct. At this point almost all of the cars were gone, their owners hacing driven them home for the night, and the ones that were left would not be bothered for several hours yet as their owners had probably walked to the nearest bar. This was a secure as it was going to get, for now.

            Hannah’s curiosity was as obvious as a neon sign in the fast fading light. “Why are we out here, Barry?”

            Barry merely held up a hand for silence, and then he started to vibrate that hand as fast as he could. Her gasp was a lot sexier than it should have been. He filed it away in the back of his head for further study at some later date.

            “That’s not all either,” he said out loud; in the strangely computer-like voice that The Flash used for late night meetings with Iris on the rooftop. She gasped again, but this time instead of silent shock following it, Barry was surprised to hear her laugh.

            “What?” he asked in his normal voice.

            “It’s incredible!” she whispered, almost to herself. Barry felt himself glow with pride at the look of awe in her eyes. And like every other stupid boy with a crush, he found himself with an insatiable urge to show off. So he took a lap around the block – in four seconds.

            “Oh my… Wow! Barry, that’s so amazing!” Hannah heard herself gushing, and would have blushed if it were not so appropriate in that moment.

            Barry took a step towards her, batting out a flame that had appeared on his arm, and then took her hand in his own. “You’re not… afraid?” he asked cautiously.

            The look of nerves and apprehension on his face made Hannah swallow the giggle that rose in her throat at his question. “Afraid? Of you? Never,” she said, hoping that her eyes told him just how much she meant that.

            It was at this precise moment that the two of them simultaneously realised how close together they were standing. So close in fact, that a small movement by either of them could result in the touching of lips to lips, should they so choose. They both also realised that neither of them had moved away.

            “So, you’re the Flash,” Hannah whispered into the tiny space between them, her eyes firmly glued to his.

            “Uh huh,” Barry nodded, swallowing hard. If they didn’t move soon, one way of the other, he was going to go crazy. And man, what was that smell? Like lavender, and honey, and varnished wood. Wow, was that her? Wow. (Here Barry began to internally face-palm at his impressive lack of vocabulary and the way that Hannah was shutting off all but four of his brain cells, but only a tiny part of him was dedicated to that. The rest of him was busy being lost in the beautiful girl that was standing almost against his chest).

            “Well, that explains a lot,” laughed Hannah softly.

            “Uh huh,” Barry said again, but this time there was no nervousness in the sound. Instead it was sure, and decided (and if Hannah was being honest, unbelievably sexy).

            Neither of them could tell who moved first, but someone did and suddenly Hannah was on her toes and Barry had leant down. Her hands were tangled in his hair, and on his neck, while his were locked around her back pulling her as close to him he could. And they were kissing. Oh god, what a kiss it was! Soft at first, but quickly deepening, as if both parties wanted to pour as much of themselves into the other as possible. And if either one had thought they knew fireworks before this moment, they had been so very wrong, but oh so happy to be corrected. Sparks flew like it was the Fourth of July (or in Hannah’s case Bonfire Night – but there was not a single part of her brain to do that kind of translation just then) and the whole of the world melted away. It was only the two of them, two people becoming one and it was as perfect as any kiss could ever hope to be.

            Eventually, it had to be broken however, and Hannah pulled away reluctantly. Barry’s little groan of disappointment made it even harder to stop, but like it or not, they were still human, and they did still need to breathe. Unfortunately. She smiled up at him as the sun set behind her, and he smiled back down at her, brushing a stray hair from her face and tucking it behind her ear.

            “You know, we did already pack up the lab. So we could just, leave,” Barry suggested, the smile carrying its way into his tone and the twinkle in his gorgeous eyes.

            “I like the way you think Barry Allen,” Hannah replied. “I was thinking pizza and a movie?”

            Barry laughed. “Oh I see how it is, I reveal to you my biggest secret, and now you need to drown it in pizza!”

            Hannah joined in with his laughter, winking as she replied, “Of course, honey, that’s just how these things go!” Her laugh was cut short by another searing kiss, which ended not _much_ faster than the first.

            “So,” whispered a breathless Barry Allen, “Your place or mine?”


	8. Pizza Fixes Everything

_I smell bacon._ This was the first thought that went through Barry Allen’s head as he woke up the next morning. The next thought was _where the hell am I?_ Then he remembered, and a grin broke out across his face. He turned over in the four poster double bed, and was momentarily concerned about the lack of Hannah that greeted him, before he recalled his first thought of the day – bacon. Swinging himself off the edge of the bed, and grabbing his boxers, he wandered out into the kitchen of Hannah’s little flat. And stopped short, stunned by the vision that greeted him there.

Hannah had woken up about half an hour earlier, and had stared at Barry while he slept in complete awe. She completely couldn’t believe what had happened last night (needless to say there wasn’t any pizza involved much to her disappointment, but Barry had very quickly more than made up for that). Bubbling with happiness she quietly got up and slipped into his green checked button down (she’d seen girls in the movies do that and it looked hot on them, why not on her, right?). In the kitchen she had set to work making a cup of tea for herself, sitting down at the table with it in her hands to think about last night and what it meant. But for once those thoughts had all been pleasant and hadn’t sent her spiralling out of control, and when she finished her tea she started making breakfast for the two of them.

So when Barry walked into the kitchen, what he saw was a slightly ruffled but still utterly perfect Hannah Graves walking around her kitchen making bacon and eggs and toast, in his shirt and a pair of black panties, and nothing else at all. Her red curls were mostly falling down her back like a waterfall, but some of them were more displaced, sticking up at odd angles and betraying the adventures of the previous night. She was humming to herself as she worked (if he wasn’t mistaken it was All You Need Is Love by The Beatles) and she was beautiful. Barry just couldn’t believe he had got so lucky.

Hannah finally noticed the bewildered scientist standing in the doorway and came over to him with a mug of coffee. Handing it to him with a kiss on the cheek, she smiled and said, “Ah he awakens! It’s a latte, with extra caramel,” and winked. She was feeling surprisingly confident this morning, and she wasn’t about to stop now. Barry smiled back at her and took his coffee to the table.

“You are amazing, you know that?” he said, earning himself another of her smiles to put in his treasure chest. “Can I help at all?” he added as she went back to work trying to wrestle the bacon out of a pan without being burnt by the oil.

“Actually, yeah, would you mind buttering the toast,” she replied, pointing to the breadboard on the side where there sat a large pile of toast and a butter dish. “The butter knife is in the drawer on the right,” she added as he nodded and made his way over to where she had indicated.

“That was fantastic!” Barry proclaimed an hour later when they finally finished breakfast. Hannah giggled and leant over to wipe away a spot of ketchup that lingered on his chin. He caught her hand as she went to sit back and pulled her gently to him as he leant across the table to her and they kissed, strong but sweet.

“Thanks, I’ve always liked to cook,” Hannah said when they broke off. “You know we should really get dressed and get to work,” she added, somewhat reluctantly, for the first time wishing that it was Saturday already. Barry took the plates out of her hands as she was trying to clear away, stealing another little kiss as he did so.

“You go and get ready, I’ll deal with this. Then I’ll get dressed and we can go to work,” he told her, playfully swiping at her hands when she tried to protest and pushing her gently towards the bedroom. Hannah gave up and with an overly-dramatic sigh, went to shower.

Barry put the plates in the dishwasher and set it going, and then he wiped down the table and the work surfaces. The he joined Hannah in the bedroom to get dressed, which resulted in a flirty wrestling match as he really needed his shirt back for work and she insisted he looked much better without it anyway. Eventually the two of them were dressed and ready to go. Her flat wasn’t far from the precinct, so they walked to work, hand in hand. Barry didn’t say much, but preferred to listen to Hannah, who was unusually talkative this morning. She spoke about her little brother back in England and how he was studying to be an engineer. She talked about things she did outside of work, like baking and singing, and she told him about how she wanted to be an actress when she was younger. Barry noticed that she didn’t talk about why she moved to Central City, or her mother, but he didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere or make her retreat into her shell again, so he didn’t press it.

When they reached the precinct Hannah stopped talking, and jerked Barry to a standstill as she halted abruptly by the doors. He watched the fear climb onto her face, replacing the happiness that made her light up much too fast and he spun her around to face him. Putting his fingers under her chin and tilting her face up to look at him, he gently asked her what was wrong.

“What if...” she trailed off, looking into his eyes and hoping that he would understand because she just couldn’t say it out loud. But because he was Barry and he knew her so well, he understood perfectly.

“Nothing is going to change. I want to work with you just as much now as I did yesterday. There are no rules against co-workers dating, and the lab is ours alone anyway. I promised, didn’t I? I am not going to leave you, ever. Okay?” Barry’s smile reached up into his eyes and Hannah felt the reassurance of it make her smile back.

“Okay,” she whispered back, leaning up to kiss him. They were rudely interrupted by a whistle and laughter from behind them. Spinning around, Hannah saw Eddie and Iris walking towards them, both with huge grins on their faces. Barry wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders, and Hannah felt herself relax. She grinned back at them and felt Barry do the same.

“Dammit Allen! I lost five bucks on you!” Eddie exclaimed with good natured humour, punching Barry playfully on the arm.

“Yeah, well, I told you it wouldn’t take a whole month for them to get together!” Iris told him with a smile, “Pay up!”

The whole party laughed as Eddie “paid up” and then Iris had to go to work. Giving Eddie a quick kiss, she hugged Barry and Hannah. Throwing a promise to meet up with Hannah for lunch the next day over her shoulder, she was gone. Eddie, Hannah, and Barry made their way into the precinct together, and almost literally bumped straight into Joe.

Joe took one look at Barry, who still had his arm around Hannah, and threw his head back laughing. Pulling Hannah into a hug, which stunned her beyond anything else that had happened so far that day, he announced to the room at large that he knew it all along and congratulated the new couple.

“Well, I told you she was the reason you kept turning up early, didn’t I Barry?!” he laughed. Barry hugged him too.

“Yeah, yeah, well you’re almost always right Joe!” replied Barry good-naturedly. Then Eddie and Joe went in to respond to a summons from the Chief and Barry and Hannah went upstairs to their lab.

When they got to the lab, Barry started setting up the first experiment, but Hannah could only stand by her desk and look at him with a blank expression in her eyes. After about thre minutes of this, Barry couldn’t stand it any more and came over to her. Stroking her cheek gently, he asked her what was wrong. And her reply shook him beyond words.

“They… they didn’t hate me,” she looked at him, utter confusion in her eyes. “They didn’t hate me, and I don’t understand.”

“Wha-? What do you mean?” Barry asked.

“I thought they would hate me, for taking you away from them, or for not being good enough, or –“ Here Hannah was cut off by a rough kiss from Barry, who could think of no other way to stop the painful words from pouring out of her mouth.

“Why on earth would they hate you? You make me happy, so unbelievably happy, and they love me, so they love you too. You’re not taking me away from anything, you’re just becoming part of my life, part of the group of people who are important to me, and they accept that. And how could you even think for a moment that you aren’t god enough for me?! You are so much better than you know, and I think that someone in your past convinced you otherwise and I would love to break their face over and over again for that, but I promise you,” here Barry paused for a moment, making completely sure that she understood the sincerity of the words he was about to say, “You and I are a team now. Always. I will never understand how you fail to see yourself for the wonder that you are, but I will spend all of my life trying to show you if you let me, okay?”

“Oh,” was all that Hannah could manage. Then she grabbed his collar and pulled him to her in a kiss that she hoped would convey all of her gratitude and happiness to him, because she was at a loss for words to cover it all. Barry kissed her back, hard, and understood it all.

The two of them got back to work after that, settling back into their routine, but it was so much better than before. They would brush hands as they walked past each other, the smiles that were thrown across the room had so much more meaning than before, and (Hannah especially) the fear and doubt that had plagued them previously left without a trace. Sometimes Barry would come and interrupt Hannah’s note taking by wrapping his arms around her from behind and reading aloud over her shoulder until she kissed him to shut him up. And both of them revelled in knowing they wouldn’t be going home alone that evening either.

This blissful mood carried them through the day until about three in the afternoon, when disaster struck in the usual way. Barry’s phone rang.

“Hi Caitlin. Yeah, of course, I’ll be right there,” he spoke quickly and with an urgency he had tried to hide before.

“Duty calls, huh?” Hannah smiled at him, but her heart was suddenly racing a million times a minute. Fear gripped her chest and panic rose up, but she forced it down, not wanting Barry to see her weakness and abandon what he had to do.

Barry, however, was far more perceptive than perhaps she would have liked. “I’ve got to go, Hannah. I’ll be back before you know it though. I’ll be fine, I promise,” he swooped in for a kiss. “Back in a flash,” he winked at her and then he was gone. Hannah couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her dorky lab partner and then quickly decided to work on something to distract herself, before the worry came back.

It had been half an hour when she ran out of things to do. Barry might have some competition on his hands for “fastest”, seeing as Hannah had just: finished an entire lab report, watered her roses, made herself three cups of tea, reorganised his folders into alphabetical order, and then written seven emails to other colleagues. Now she had nothing to occupy her mind with except thoughts of Barry in danger and it was killing her. She could feel the imminent panic attack, and as much as se fought against it, the inevitable soon happened. _What if it’s a fire and he gets crushed by a burning beam?_ The black claws stretched out, clicking their joints as they did so. _What if it’s a bomb and it explodes, and he doesn’t get away in time?_ They crawled up her neck, slowly as if they were enjoying it. _What if it’s bridge and it breaks just as he’s saving the last citizen and he drowns?_ The claws began to squeeze, tighter and tighter until the last gap was closed and there was no room for air to move into her aching lungs. Hannah gasped and choked and doubled over, the pain in her chest beyond anything she usually had to deal with. It felt like her heart was beating on double speed to make up for the lack of oxygen, and she wrapped her own hands around her throat trying to pry the black claws away. But as always, she couldn’t grasp what wasn’t really there, and so she stood in the middle of the room, tears streaming down her face. She hated her anxiety like it was another person that constantly stood on her neck and hit her all the time. She wished it would go mind its own business, or that she could move continents to get away from it. But instead she waited until she could breathe again, and then she curled up under her desk in a little ball. Here it was safe and here she would stay until Barry came back. Because he promised he was coming back.

 It was another ten minutes before he did, but when Barry arrived in the lab, his first thought was one of fear. _She’s gone. Where is she?_ Hannah heard the door close behind him and called out for him, still too upset to move from her safe haven under her desk. Barry came around the desk and saw her, her face covered in tear tracks and her eyes looking up at him, wide and afraid. Immediately he got down under the desk with her and curled himself around her, pulling her into his lap.

“What happened?” he whispered gently in her ear.

“Panic attack. Bad one.” Hannah couldn’t seem to form full sentences, but she pushed on determined to make him understand. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” she admitted, her voice cracking as tears threatened once again.

Barry pulled her closer to him, wrapping his arms around her tightly and rocking them both gently. “Of course I was coming back. I promised, didn’t I?”

Hannah began to cry quietly, “Yeah, but what if you…” she couldn’t bring herself to express her fears out loud.

“Shhhh… it’s okay. I’m here, alright. I’m fine. And so are you.” The two of them stayed there for what felt like forever. Eventually, Barry persuaded Hannah to come out from under the desk, and they packed up the lab equipment. Neither of them felt like putting in any more hours for the day, so they clocked out early, and went back to Hannah’s place.

Barry ordered pizza (Hannah insisted that he owed her one considering that they missed out the night before. Barry made a joke about how she didn’t really miss out on anything which resulted in a beetroot blush from Hannah and some muttering about “Just order the silly pizza, Barry”) and then the two of them sat down to watch The Hobbit (because Barry insisted that it was one of his favourite films and Hannah agreed fully, mostly because she liked watching Tauriel being a badass). The evening went by without further incident and they ended up falling asleep in each other’s arms with the empty pizza box on the floor and the Hobbit theme playing gently in the background.

 


	9. Lunch With Iris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is super short, but the next two are longer (I think) so enjoy this in the meantime :D

The next morning was a Saturday. The couple decided that Barry really should go home and get a fresh set of clothes (after breakfast of course, which was as blissful as the previous morning) and Hannah had a lunch date with Iris to keep. So once Barry had left, she set about tidying up the flat, and then herself. Cleaning made her happy and as she hoovered the living room, she hummed to herself. In fact, once she started, she couldn’t stop, and she was full out singing before she knew it (“When You Believe” from _The Prince of Egypt_ , for reasons unknown to her, other than it matched her euphoric mood perfectly). She got dressed and spritzed her hair with some water to make it curl properly again, and then left the flat to walk to Jitters.

The walk to the coffee shop was lovely, the crisp air bringing out all the bright colours of the day. Hannah smiled at strangers on the street in a way that was very unlike her, but felt good all the same. She saw children playing with the stray cats on the corner, and mother’s trying to pull them away. The sun filtered down though the leaves of the surrounding foliage with a pleasant dappled effect that made her wish she had brought her camera. It wasn’t until she saw the young couple kissing on the bridge over the little stream in the park that she remembered what Iris was going to want to talk about. And she felt herself begin worrying about it.

Anxiety is a horrible thing to live with, mainly because most people don’t understand it, and because you _can’t turn it off._ Hannah spent most of her life worrying and panicking about things that she really shouldn’t be worrying or panicking about, but she couldn’t help it. And after twenty five years of this, it was really starting to annoy her to the extreme. Why couldn’t she just go to lunch with her friend, and talk about her…. Well, that explained the panicking. She had no idea what she and Barry _were_ now. Boyfriend didn’t seem quite right, being as they had only had one proper date and they’d slept together once. But lover just sounded harsh and temporary (which she really didn’t want it to be). And he wasn’t just her friend any more, so what the hell should she call him?! Taking big breaths, she realised she had arrived at Jitters and decided to just do her best not to think about it too much. Iris might not even want to talk about it.

Surprise, surprise, Iris wanted to talk about it, more than anything else. She had known (or so she claimed) that Hannah and Barry were perfect for each other the moment she spoke to Hannah, and now she wanted details of their date and how much Hannah liked Barry exactly (if there was a whiteboard around, she probably would have asked for a graph) and how working with him was going. Barry was the sole topic of conversation for the entire hour and a half, but Hannah realised quite early on that Iris wasn’t going to ask her to put a label on it, so she relaxed a little and actually found herself enjoying giggling about Barry with Iris. She told Hannah about times from when the two of them were growing up, and Hannah responded with cute anecdotes of her time working with him (like that one time that he had accidentally watered her plants with coffee and nearly killed them, and spent all day trying to fix them with various chemicals so she wouldn’t notice). She discovered that talking to Iris about Barry was easy, and that she liked talking about him to someone else who knew him so well. It made her feel ordinary, and she could almost pretend that she didn’t have anxiety. She could, for the moment, pretend that Jake never happened at all, that she moved because she really did just “feel like a change”, and that her mum was going to call when she got home. And with that thought, the happy mood disappeared, popping the bubble of pleasantness and leaving her with her fear and sadness again. But she looked up at Iris, who had noticed something was wrong enough to stop talking, saw concern in her friend’s eyes, and she knew she wasn’t alone anymore.

“What’s up?” Iris asked, reaching out a hand to rest on Hannah’s knee in a gesture of comfort.

“I was just… thinking. About some things that, well, I don’t think about. Ever. Or I try not to at least.” Hannah knew she wasn’t making a lot of sense, but as she had that very first day with Iris, she wanted to tell her everything all of a sudden. But, years of training herself not to took over, and this time she shut herself away again. “You know what, it’s not important. I’m fine, really,” she tried for a smile, and it must have looked more convincing than it felt because Iris smiled back at her.

Iris looked at her pink, sparkly, watch (it had been a present from Eddie. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him she didn’t really like pink) and stood up. Hannah stood with her. “I have to get back to work,” Iris explained leaning in for a hug.

“Of course. I should get back to the flat, I’ve got some things to do as well,” Hannah responded, returning the hug.

“Okay, I’ll see you sometime this week though, right? Barry promised he’d drag you to the karaoke night at the bar on 14th on Thursday,” Iris added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye that made her look entirely too much like Barry.

“K-k-karaoke?” Hannah stammered.

“Yeah! It’ll be fun!” Iris gave her another quick hug and then started to go back towards the kitchen. “See you soon!” she called over her shoulder as she pushed through the double doors and disappeared.

“Karaoke?” Hannah said again, to the empty space in front of her. Then she felt herself smile, just a little bit. “I’m going to kill him,” she promised out loud, with a sneaking suspicion that she had just inherited the mischievous twinkle.    


	10. Knowing For Certain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I can't believe how many of you there are, wow! Thank you so much for your support with this, I am loving writing it. Here's a chapter to tide you over, the next one will be huge! (I have some very angsty things planned for Barry and Hannah, hope you stick around to find out what they are!)

“Barry…”

This was the sound that halted the Flash at the door of his girlfriend’s apartment. He had let himself in with the key under her doormat, hoping to surprise her with the bunch of red roses he had purchased on his way there. Now, however, he was standing rooted to the spot with a feeling not unlike fear. Oh god, what had he done to deserve that tone of voice? He must have done _something_ wrong. Oh no… And just like that Barry Allen remembered what he had told Iris, and what Iris had undoubtedly told Hannah. Snapping out of his trance he walked down the rest of the hall and poked his head round the door frame of the kitchen.

“Yes, love?” he replied, with a smile that very nearly got him completely out of trouble (not that Hannah would ever admit that).  “How was lunch with Iris?”

“Lunch with Iris was lovely. Actually she told me that we all have plans together on Thursday?” Hannah could feel the grin trying to sneak on to her face and had to mentally beat it back down, because she was enjoying the look of fear on Barry’s face far too much.

“Plans? Oh, right yes, the bar…” he trailed off nervously.

“Yes. The _karaoke_ bar, Barry,” Hannah replied, the steel in her voice making her feel unbelievably powerful (and she imagined it was the sort of power that she really shouldn’t have been given).

“Karaoke, yes, that’s right.” By this point Barry had come fully into the kitchen and was leaning back against one of the counters, rocking on his heels slightly, and had decided that he would just pretend it was all fine until Hannah actually said otherwise. A good plan, were it not for the fact that he couldn’t stand not knowing if he had done something to upset her, making the next words out of his mouth, “Is that okay?”

Hannah crossed her arms and did her best death stare at him. She watched as Barry physically shrank back a bit, and then relaxed her face into the grin it had been aching to share with him. “Of course it’s fine! I love to sing, you know that!”

Barry almost fell over with relief and Hannah giggled at him. “Dear lord woman, I thought you were mad at me!” he exclaimed.

“Sorry!” Hannah laughed, “I just couldn’t resist it!” Then her face became serious again. “Although, really, I don’t like singing in front of people too much,” She added.

“That’s okay,” Barry came over to her and wrapped her up in his arms, the roses abandoned on the counter top. “You don’t have to sing if you don’t want to, I’ll make sure no-one pressures you into it.” Hannah smiled up at him gratefully, and he leaned down for a kiss.

“So, it is now Saturday evening, love, and we have the flat to ourselves. What could we possibly think of to do?” Barry’s grin took on a roguish quality and Hannah felt a blush creep into her cheeks.

“I don’t know,” she smiled innocently at him, “Maybe a film? Or a board game?”

“Hmmm,” Barry mumbled into her neck, “I was thinking of a different kind of entertainment.” With this last statement he swept her up into his arms, smiling brightly at her little yelp of surprise and joy, and carried her into the bedroom, setting her gently down on the bed. He stopped for a second to drink in the sight of her there, bright and smiling among the white sheets, her red hair a brilliant splash of colour. Then his moment of reflection was interrupted by her tugging him down on top of her, and the rest of the night passed in total bliss.

 

Hannah was surprised to find that, when she finally woke up on Sunday, Barry had already made breakfast and was bringing it to her in bed. “Wow, did I do something special to deserve this?” she wondered aloud.

“Not particularly, you’re just special without trying,” Barry replied with a small smile and a kiss on the tip of her nose. She kissed him back, full on the mouth, pouring her happiness into him in a way that words just couldn’t express. When they finally broke apart, Barry leaned back against the pillows, his arm around Hannah who leant into him like he was all she needed in the world. And he really was.

“You are so beautiful,” he sighed into her hair.

“What’s the date? Only, I’m slightly worried we lost more than one evening last night,” she asked him playfully.

Barry grinned at her, the cute lopsided one that she loved so much. “Nope, it’s definitely Sunday 28th March today,” he replied, nudging her gently. When she didn’t respond to his gesture, he noticed she had gone stiff. “Hannah…?” he asked gently, an uncertain fear creeping into his voice.

“It… It’s the 28th today?” she whispered, her voice suddenly hoarse and weak.

Barry nodded, trying to pull her to him to comfort her (not that he understood what was wrong) but she pulled away and got out of the bed.

“I just- I need a minute. Okay?” she said, not waiting for a reply before she disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Sliding down the other side of the door until she was sitting on the tiled floor, she pressed her palms to her face. She couldn’t deal with this. She had forgotten, Barry had made her so happy, but then he told her what day it was and…. She had thought she was over it, thought she could pretend it wasn’t any different from any other day, but it wasn’t. And she couldn’t. Oh god… The tears came thick and fast, the sobs constricting her throat and choking out of her mouth in a trickle that soon turned into a cascade.

“Hannah….” Barry’s voice came through the door, gentle and concerned. He had pressed himself up against the wood, and had heard her crying. “Hannah, let me in, please.” Her sobs were like knives in his heart and every one was killing him a little more. This was something that super speedy healing couldn’t fix, but he needed to help her somehow. That was what he did, who he was – he helped. And if he couldn’t help _her_ , then he might as well just hang up the suit right then. “Please,” he repeated when he got no reply. Slowly he heard her get to her feet and unlock the door. It creaked when he pushed it open to reveal her tear-stained face, red and blotchy, and so utterly miserable. He grabbed her and pulled her against his chest, wishing desperately that he could keep her there forever and never let anything hurt her, but he also knew that this hurt was coming from inside, not out.

Eventually, Hannah stopped crying enough to speak. The words came out in little bursts, along with slight hiccoughs and squeaks, as words always do after a long crying session.

“My mum…. Before I moved here….. I moved because she…. Well… she…” Why was it so hard to say it out loud? Hannah wasn’t one of those people who thought that if you didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be true. It was true. It had happened. But she couldn’t quite admit it through words released into the air. But Barry had a right to know, if he was going to sign up for her, he needed to know the baggage that came with the deal. “My mum died,” she spluttered out, quickly, before she could take the words back.

“Oh god, Hannah. I’m so sorry,” Barry murmured to her, stroking her hair and for the millionth time that morning wondering what the universe could possibly have been thinking to launch all of these horrible things on to the sweetest girl in the entire world.

“It’s okay,” she whispered back. “It wasn’t exactly unexpected, it just happened at a really bad time for me, which makes me sound so selfish and awful, but she had cancer and she was dying for two years, and then one day she wasn’t dying anymore because she was dead.” Hannah broke off into tears again and Barry rocked her gently back and forth in his arms on the floor.

“That was why you moved here, wasn’t it?” he finally asked after her sobs had subsided a little. She nodded.

“Among other things,” she added, but Barry saw the shadow that passed over her face with those words and decided that right then wasn’t the best time to ask about those “other things”.

Hannah sat up a little, leaning away from him and looking into the middle distance, at something only she could see. “She was wonderful, Barry. You would have loved her. She used to sing, like me, but better. She would sing me to sleep when I was little, and she’d make up a new lullaby every night. And she was so smart and funny, kind of like you actually. She was always laughing, at herself mostly, all the way until the end.” Barry reached out a hand to stroke her back, and she turned round to face him, a watery smile appearing through her tears. “She would have loved you so much. She was always saying I should find someone who wasn’t…. well, someone more like you.”

“She sounds amazing,” Barry whispered.

“Yeah,” Hannah agreed quietly, with her smile spreading slowly across her face like melting butter, “Yeah, she was.”

They stayed there for a long time, just sitting there while Hannah whispered stories of her mum to Barry, who eagerly listened to every word, wishing more and more that he could have met the woman who was responsible for the miracle of Hannah Graves. And it was in that moment, with her lying there in his arms feeling her heart beating against his chest, that he first realised it. He wouldn’t say it just then, it was his secret for a while longer. But his smile stretched wider and he puller her a little closer and basked in the warmth of the glow it gave him to know for certain.


	11. Karaoke Can Be Deadly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys,   
> I am so sorry that this has taken me so long to update. I am really loving writing this story but my final exams have got in the way the last couple of months. However, I am now free to do nothing but write, so here is an extra long chapter, with an exciting cliffhanger ;)

Thursday rolled around quickly for the two scientists. The week had been spent in their usual routine, with work being nothing out of the ordinary, and the two of them alternating who slept over at whose apartment each night. They hadn’t spent a night apart since that Sunday and both of them felt deep down that they probably wouldn’t ever again. And they were completely okay with that.

Hannah was almost looking forward to going out with her friends, which was certainly a first for her. Barry had done so much more for her than she knew. Not that he had “fixed” her, because that would be ridiculous. For starters, she didn’t need “fixing” she just needed support, and secondly (even if she did need to be “fixed”) no amount of love from someone else was going to do that for her. But his support had been unwavering, helping her through each panic attack, and trying his best to help her avoid them in the first place. He was sweet, and kind, and gentle, and she truly couldn’t imagine her life without him in it.

Barry, on the other hand, was dreading Thursday, not that he had said so to his girlfriend (although he hadn’t said that word out loud yet, he loved the way it sounded in his head and it made him smile every time he thought it). He was worried for Hannah, scared that the evening would prove too traumatic for her. But he reminded himself how strong she was, and that all of their friends would support her if she needed it, and he was calm again. He looked over at Hannah, who was going over some samples from the latest crime scene (robbery, but it shouldn’t be too hard to solve seeing as the idiots hadn’t worn gloves and left fingerprints everywhere), her nose all scrunched up as she concentrated. Barry felt his heart jump in his chest, the way that it always did when he saw her, and he smiled to himself, not quite believing how lucky he had got. He looked at his watch and then started to tidy away his paperwork for the day.

Hannah noticed the movement and when she saw the time on the clock on the wall, she started to pack up too. When she had finished neatening her desk, she crossed the room to help Barry (who, as usual, had messed up his filing system and had also spilt a cup of coffee in the process).

“You know, for a superhero, you’re a little clumsy,” she giggled at him as he scowled and scrubbed harder at the spot on his desk. “Give it here, silly,” she said, gently shoving him aside and taking the cloth from him. Barry stood with one hand on his hip, head cocked slightly to one side, and watched her as she cleaned up the coffee stain, and put his paperwork into the appropriate files. He walked up behind her as she turned away from the filing cabinet and snaked his arms around her waist, snuggling his face into her neck. God, she smelled amazing! Like honey, and warm toast, and something else that he couldn’t quite grasp… roses! She smelt like her beloved roses. He smiled against her skin and she twisted in his arms so that they were facing each other.

“Hi,” she said, softly and almost shyly. Barry would never get over how fragile and unsure of herself she seemed at times. It was a wonder to him that she couldn’t see how amazing she truly was, but he was fully dedicated to fixing that particular situation as much as he could.

“Hi,” he smiled back. “Are you ready to go?”

Hannah grinned at him and nodded, unable to hide her enthusiasm for the upcoming outing with their friends. “Can we go back to my place first though? I want to change,” she added, gesturing down at her jeans and checked shirt (which Barry had accidentally left behind at her flat a week ago and now was her favourite shirt of all time).

“Of course,” Barry agreed, a mischievous twinkle creeping into his eyes as he added, “Although you look fabulous the way you are.”

Hannah blushed scarlet, highlighting the freckles on her cheeks, and gently pushed Barry away while he laughed at her reaction to the compliment.

Forty-five minutes later, Hannah stood in front of her mirror putting the final touches to her eyeliner. She looked amazing, even if she did say so herself. Her dress was a light blue colour, like a sky just after sunrise, and it flowed around her ankles, the satin material soft against her skin. Her hair was down out of her work ponytail, and it fell over her shoulders in waves of scarlet that reminded her of a Greek goddess. Her makeup was completely on point, and she felt ready to face anything.

Barry’s reaction when she walked into the living room was worth the time it had taken to get to that point. He had been reading a science magazine that slipped from his fingers, forgotten, as he looked up and saw her. His little intake of breath blew out in a long, slow sigh, and his eyes were filled with an indescribable awe at the vision in front of him.

“Wow.”

Hannah giggled a bit, and did a twirl so that her dress fanned out as she spun. Barry got to his feet and crossed the room to take her in his arms.

“You look gorgeous,” he told her, sealing his sincerity with a quick kiss.

“Shall we get going?” she asked, linking her arm in his. Barry nodded his agreement and the two of them wandered out of the door. The bar wasn’t too far from the apartment, so they decided to walk.

“Do you ever get tired of going at my speed?” Hannah inquired of him after a little while.

“Not at all, actually. I like going slowly to see the world as I pass through it,” Barry replied, “And going at your speed means I can do this,” he added with a grin, lifting her off the pavement and spinning her around in the air as she laughed. When he put her gently back on the ground, she pushed herself up onto her toes to kiss him, and a familiar feeling rushed through her veins. Hannah smiled into the kiss as the lightning sped around her body, warming every part of her, and for a brief moment allowed her to entertain the idea that she might be in love. But soon the kiss was ended and the feeling calmed into a glow that radiated through her in a much more gentle way, and the l-word was once again a place that Hannah dared not go.

When they arrived at the bar, Barry stopped outside the door.

“We do not have to do this if you don’t want to,” he told Hannah, his eyes locked with hers to let her know how serious he was.

“I want to,” was the only reply that he got, and then she was leading him into the bar by the hand.

“Hannah!” Iris called over the music as she spotted them entering. Waving back with her free hand, Hannah made her way over to where Iris and Eddie were sitting, with Barry following her, slightly bewildered. Who was this confident woman that had appeared in place of his usually shy and anxious girlfriend? Not that he was complaining at all, in fact he couldn’t help but think how beautiful she was when she seemed so much less encumbered by doubts.

Eddie shook Barry’s hand as they sat down, the girls already lost in conversation of their own.

“I think your girl has gone to get the next round of drinks,” Eddie said. “She’s certainly special that one,” he added, as he watched Barry’s smile follow Hannah to the bar.

Barry laughed a little and shook his head as he turned his attention back to Eddie. “You have no idea.”

About four rounds of beer later, Hannah decided she was sufficiently drunk enough to try singing. This was partially because she hadn’t sung with Barry in public yet (although they did do a pretty amazing rendition of Summer Nights from Grease in the shower occasionally) and partially because Iris had been begging her to sing for close to half an hour and Hannah couldn’t bear it any more.

Grabbing Barry by the hand she dragged him to the stage, wobbling slightly in her heels, and grinned at him when she saw what song he had chosen. Waving at Iris and Eddie, she took the microphone off the stand and focused her breathing. She’d always had the uncanny ability to turn off her drunkenness up to a point, so when she sang it didn’t slur at all. In fact, the entire bar went silent within the first two lines of the song, but Hannah didn't notice. She was far too busy singing, her eyes tight shut, focused only on the melody and the words. When Barry joined in, her eyes sprung open in surprise; she had almost forgotten he was there. But his harmonies blended with hers so naturally that she started to feel less afraid of the l-word again, something that was surely helped along by the alcohol in her system.

When the song came to an end, the two of them bowed to a bar full of applause, and Barry swooped down to kiss his amazing girlfriend, attempting to convey some of his pride over her talent. Hannah smiled into the kiss as the sound of Eddie cheering them on at the bar got louder, and then the two of them left the stage together.

“Oh my god! I never knew you could sing!” spluttered Iris when they arrived back at their seats.  Hannah laughed, a little self-conscious now that she was off stage. Iris started to praise her talent further, and Hannah felt the blush rising in her cheeks. That hadn't been a terrible disaster had it? It had gone okay. And she and Barry sounded great together. They were pretty great together. But what if…? And there it was. The anxiety she had tried so hard to ignore, rose up in her mind like a dark cloud that was severely threatening to rain on her parade. She felt like crying. Why couldn't she have one night where she just lived like everyone else, not worrying about everything she did?

“Hannah? You okay?” Barry had noticed her face change.

“I’m fine, I just think I want to go home now, if that’s okay?” she replied, sighing inwardly. She was very tired all of a sudden.

“Yeah, of course it is. I’ll say our goodbyes, go wait outside for me. The fresh air will help a bit, I think,” Barry told her, concern in his eyes. Hannah smiled up at him and leaned up for a quick kiss before Barry disappeared to say goodbye to Iris and Eddie (who had wandered off into a different corner of the bar).

Hannah walked to the front door of the bar and stepped out into the cool, quiet evening. She took a deep breath and immediately felt her brain calming down. The crowded, noisy bar had been fun, but too much for her senses to handle all at once. She wrapped her arms around herself and swayed a bit on the pavement, remembering the beautiful feeling of singing with Barry. Smiling to herself, she let out a sigh of contentment.

“I haven’t seen that smile in the longest time.”

Hannah froze. She was imagining things. She was very drunk, and she was hallucinating, because that couldn't have been him. He didn't know where she was, she had escaped him and gone far away and so that couldn't have been…


	12. Old But New Enemies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading my story! I am loving writing it, and I promise there will be more regular updates now my life is back on track :) I'm sorry for the incredibly long delay between this chapter and the last one, but I hope you continue to enjoy it, and I hope you stick around for what I am anticipating will be a most suspenseful twist!

“Aren’t you gonna say hello?” Jake smirked at her as he emerged from the shadowy alley next to the bar; casually swaggering forward as though he owned the world. He had always walked that way. And she had always scurried along two paces behind him, considered not quite worthy enough to stand on equal footing. Hannah trembled slightly as he came closer, her body betraying her fear.

"I missed you Hannah," Jake continued, reaching out a finger to stroke her face. The physical contact broke the trance that Hannah had been in and she moved backwards, away from him, towards the door of the bar. Barry would be back any second. In fact, if she screamed, he'd come running (which for Barry meant more than it did for most people). Jake frowned at her sudden movement, and then shook his head at her almost mockingly.

"Don't go getting any ideas about screaming for your hero now, doll," he drawled in a terrible imitation of an American accent. "There's a couple of my pals waiting to shoot as many innocent bystanders as possible if you make so much as a squeak."

Hannah shook with anger, fear, and helplessness. She wouldn't call for Barry. Nobody needed to die today. Not this time.

"That's right, darling. Now, just waltz yourself over here, and we'll get going." Hannah felt her right foot obey Jake's command, without her even thinking, and then her left was following. In two seconds she was standing close enough for him to touch her again, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. She grit her teeth, and tried to hold in her disgust, desperate not to provoke an attack on her friends and the other people in the bar. Jake's arm tightened around her and she found herself likening it to a Boa Constrictor, suffocating it's prey before swallowing it whole. Yes, a slimy snake seemed the perfect metaphor for her ex-boyfriend.

Jake bent down close to her ear, his lips tickling her as he whispered, "Hold tight now." A bright light illuminated the two from above, surrounding them in a column of glowing blue, and then everything went black.

Barry stepped out onto the pavement, the noise of the bar fading as the door swung shut behind him. "Hannah?" he called, the words echoing around the clearly empty street. A twinge of fear gripped his heart. Something was very wrong.


End file.
